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cheetah7071 posted:If pop history is okay Tom Holland's in the shadow of the sword has several chapters devoted to showing what pre- and early-Islamic Arabia looked like This book is pretty full of poo poo about the origins of Islam, just FYI.
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Dec 15, 2017 04:59
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Really? gently caress
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Dec 15, 2017 05:07
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Outside of like Palmyra or Nabatea, studies on pre-Islamic Arabia largely suck rear end. Most original sources we have are brief comments by their neighbors. We don't have a lot of internal stuff. After the coming of Islam, Islamic historians had ideological reasons to portray pre-Islamic Arabia as barbaric and primitive, so a lot of that stuff's not reliable, and while there was a bunch of archaeological work and studies done in the 19th century by French Arabists, a lot of archaeological sites are still not very well explored or preserved. There's a lot of stuff from South Arabian civilizations in Yemen, for instance, including your friend Shammar Yari'sh, conqueror of Tibet, and his Himyarites, but, Yemen hasn't been particularly safe since the middle of the 20th century. Meanwhile, referring back to Palmyra, ISIS wrecked most of the surviving archaeological sites there when they took over the area, destroying sites like the surprisingly well preserved temple of Baal-Shamin, the temple of Bel, and a bunch of Palmyrine tower tombs (rich Palmyrines entombed their dead in these four or five story towers). You might want to check out Oxford University Press's "Arabs and Empires Before Islam", which is a look at what we know.
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Dec 15, 2017 05:07
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:This book is pretty full of poo poo about the origins of Islam, just FYI. Doesn't he argue that pre-Islamic Mecca didn't exist?
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Dec 15, 2017 05:09
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He argued that the taught location of Mecca has moved at least once in early Islam iirc
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Dec 15, 2017 05:11
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I remember reading that there were a bunch of Jewish tribes and kings in Arabia before the rise of Islam. Unfortunately, this was in Larry Gonick's book, which tends towards accepting legends at face value.
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Dec 15, 2017 05:28
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While I agree substantially with the criticisms of Malthusian doctrine that have been offered here, I think some posters are going a little bit too far in their criticisms. Most famine doesn't resemble the Irish potato famine. Most famines kill very few people directly through calorie deficit, instead they mostly kill by compromising immune systems and injuring through nutritional deficits. Calorie and nutritional deficits make women stop ovulating and the pregnant much more likely to miscarry or die in childbirth. Children who experience malnutrition take longer to reach puberty, and are much more likely to die if they get sick. This is really how famine regulates population. Mostly its not through periodic and dramatic mass die-offs. Rather famine makes everyone more likely to die of the threats they already face. All that said, not long ago I read a summary or abstract of an article on pre-historic populations in North America. What the authors found was that the population grew almost continuously at a steady rate from its inception, with little difference in growth between the hunter-gather era and the introduction of agriculture. What this means is that there has literally never been a time when North American populations reached the carrying capacity, not in 15,000 years. If I am remembering their conclusions correctly, that is not a good sign for the validity of Malthusian theory! Ofaloaf posted:Is there a good introductory work out there for Pre-Islamic Arabia? Wikipedia's far from a scholarly source, but concerning the Greco-Roman world it hasn't been that bad for brief summaries. By contrast, I tried to find something on the kings of Himyar, and an article on one particular monarch says I have like four academic pdfs someone gave me on the subject, mostly about pre-Islamic religion. Someone gave them to me in DnD though I never had time to do more than skim them. I guess I could send them to you somehow  ?
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Dec 15, 2017 05:30
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sullat posted:I remember reading that there were a bunch of Jewish tribes and kings in Arabia before the rise of Islam. Unfortunately, this was in Larry Gonick's book, which tends towards accepting legends at face value. There were quite a few Jewish Arab tribes in Arabia before most got kicked out by the rise of Islam.
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Dec 15, 2017 05:38
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:There were quite a few Jewish Arab tribes in Arabia before most got kicked out by the rise of Islam. Yeah, the Jewish Diaspora was a real thing due to the Babylonian captivity (and the Assyrians before them). The book of Esther is specifically about the Jewish population in Persia. There remain significant pockets of Jews in Iran even today.
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Dec 15, 2017 05:44
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sullat posted:I remember reading that there were a bunch of Jewish tribes and kings in Arabia before the rise of Islam. Unfortunately, this was in Larry Gonick's book, which tends towards accepting legends at face value. There were. For instance, Himyar, in what's now Yemen, had concerted to Judaism in the 4th century and stayed that way until Aksum invaded, using as their justification the persecution of Christians. But there was a fairly decent sized population of Yemenite Jews until modern times. In 1949-50, Operation Magic Carpet brought most of them to Israel. There were also a bunch of North Arabian Jewish tribes that become significant in history because of their interactions with Muhammed and Islam. A lot of early Islam seems to have been shaped by Judaism, and Muhammed seems to hoped early on that Jews would accept him as a prophet. There were, for instance, 3 main Jewish tribes in the city of Medina; the Banu Nadir, the Banu Qurayza, and the Banu Qaynuqa. None of thode tribes had really great fates after Muhammed came to the city. The Banu Qaynuqa were driven out after a bunch of revenge killings (A Banu Qaynuqa man harassed and then stripped a Muslim woman. Then some other Muslims who saw it killed him. A bunch of Banu Qaynuqa killed them, and so on.) The Banu Qurayza were destroyed after the battle of the Trench (men killed, women sold in slavery) because Muhammed accused them of collaborating with Mecca, and the Banu Nadir were expelled to Khaybar, where there were a bunch of other Jewish tribes, after raiding Muslim caravans. After the Muslims took over Khaybar stay in exchange for an annual tribute of half of their produce, but Abu Bakr expelled the Jews from Khaybar after Muhammed'a death.
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Dec 15, 2017 06:00
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cheetah7071 posted:He argued that the taught location of Mecca has moved at least once in early Islam iirc I know the city you were supposed to pray towards was swapped early on from Medina to Mecca, but actually changing the location of Mecca seems unfeasible. The Kaaba seems hard to move. Vincent Van Goatse posted:There were quite a few Jewish Arab tribes in Arabia before most got kicked out by the rise of Islam. I really wonder how many got kicked out, and how many just plain converted. Islam's an abrahamic religion after all, it seems like it'd have some appeal to Jews. Although there was also a good long while where the Islamic nations were pretty darn friendly with other religions. After all, for a while it was only the non-muslims who paid the taxes. Might have gone better than roman rule of Israel.
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Dec 15, 2017 06:10
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Epicurius posted:There were. For instance, Himyar, in what's now Yemen, had concerted to Judaism in the 4th century and stayed that way until Aksum invaded, using as their justification the persecution of Christians. But there was a fairly decent sized population of Yemenite Jews until modern times. In 1949-50, Operation Magic Carpet brought most of them to Israel. Yeah, that's the version from the cartoon.
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Dec 15, 2017 06:27
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SlothfulCobra posted:I know the city you were supposed to pray towards was swapped early on from Medina to Mecca, but actually changing the location of Mecca seems unfeasible. The Kaaba seems hard to move. His argument was that Mecca's location and what exactly the Kaaba was isn't specified in writing until much later so there were multiple feuding traditions until one won out. Of course he used the changing direction of prayer as evidence so if layer scholarship says they were just pointing at Medina at first then it's probably completely bunk
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Dec 15, 2017 06:45
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SlothfulCobra posted:I really wonder how many got kicked out, and how many just plain converted. Islam's an abrahamic religion after all, it seems like it'd have some appeal to Jews. We know some did. If you believe the Muslim sources, one of the first converts from Medina was a rabbi. At least two of Muhammed's wives were enslaved after the battle of the Trench and converted, and there was a Jewish tribe that was related to Muhammed, the Banu Najjar, that converted en masse. Also, supposedly, Abu Ayyub, the oldest man to participate in the first siege of Constantinople, had been born Jewish. But we also know a lot didn't. The coming of Islam was a disaster for the Jewish tribes of central Arabia, especially after Muhammed's death. It was Umar who expelled almost all non-Muslims.
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Dec 15, 2017 06:53
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cheetah7071 posted:Really? gently caress It's debatable. The book is intentionally revisionist, it's not giving you what would be considered the commonly accepted story. Other posters have mentioned how there are a ton of problems with the sources. I would say "full of poo poo" is far too strong, but there is disagreement and Holland staked out a position on the revisionist side and is not trying to give a fair summary of the controversies. I don't have an issue with that and like reading those sorts of histories lately, but if it's the only book you've read, you should dig up a more traditional one for an alternate point of view.
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Dec 15, 2017 06:54
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SlothfulCobra posted:I know the city you were supposed to pray towards was swapped early on from Medina to Mecca, but actually changing the location of Mecca seems unfeasible. The Kaaba seems hard to move. Er, the Kaaba of today is not the original one. It has been rebuilt at least three times over the centuries, four depending on how you count such things as well as having artifacts from it looted and eventually returned such as the Black Stone. Almost certainly, it's not in the place it started anymore. I personally doubt that everything involved moved so much you would say it was in a whole different town, granted.
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Dec 15, 2017 06:57
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:There were quite a few Jewish Arab tribes in Arabia before most got kicked out by the rise of Islam. I was blown away by how prolific Christianity was beyond the eastern frontiers of the Roman empire as well. That poo poo got around. Was Greek still a common language in Persia during the first three centuries after Christ?
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Dec 15, 2017 07:42
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Was Greek still a common language in Persia during the first three centuries after Christ? I don't know how common Greek was as a language in Persia when it was under Selucid control. It wad my understanding, in most of the Hellenistic world, Greek was the language of the elite and of deliberately planted Greek colonies, but that the average person probably didn't know it conversationally. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Dec 15, 2017 |
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Dec 15, 2017 08:06
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I imagine it was a lot like Latin in the further reaches of the empire, the elite and educated and anyone who wanted to do business spoke it, a lot of people might've known bits and pieces, but the local language would've remained dominant for the majority.
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Dec 15, 2017 08:21
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PittTheElder posted:I was blown away by how prolific Christianity was beyond the eastern frontiers of the Roman empire as well. That poo poo got around. The Church of the East had converts as far away as Tang dynasty China  ! Not a ton to be fair, and most were driven underground in the same purge that drove the buddhists underground but they existed in enough number that someone wanted that stele made, which is a cool little bit of trivia.
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Dec 15, 2017 08:41
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Don Gato posted:The Church of the East had converts as far away as Tang dynasty China And later missionaries could use the existence of the stele to argue that they were not importing a new foreign religion but reviving an inactive but otherwise perfectly legal existing one.
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Dec 15, 2017 17:55
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cheetah7071 posted:If food production wasn't a limiting factor then why was hunger and famine so drat common? Not trying to be snarky, trying to ask a serious question. If the land could have supported higher population, why did the existing people starve? A major contribution to famine, I believe, is not necessarily food production but also food distribution which comes up when you have areas which are interdependent in a way that it doesn't if everyone lives on a farm. That's a logistical problem which took until surprisingly recently to figure out a good solution to but once solved, allows to guard against poor harvests locally by spreading out production across a wider area and transporting surplus to where it's needed.
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Dec 15, 2017 18:39
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OwlFancier posted:A major contribution to famine, I believe, is not necessarily food production but also food distribution which comes up when you have areas which are interdependent in a way that it doesn't if everyone lives on a farm. That's a logistical problem which took until surprisingly recently to figure out a good solution to but once solved, allows to guard against poor harvests locally by spreading out production across a wider area and transporting surplus to where it's needed. Uhh we still haven't "solved" that in the sense that international capitalism exists
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Dec 15, 2017 18:46
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Ras Het posted:Uhh we still haven't "solved" that in the sense that international capitalism exists Yes, but that is arguably by design, whereas internal famines were/are probably not so much.
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Dec 15, 2017 19:00
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Ras Het posted:Uhh we still haven't "solved" that in the sense that international capitalism exists I think you'll find capitalism is the solution he's referring to?
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Dec 15, 2017 22:24
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(it wasn't) More I would think general transportation and storage improvements as well as policy changes with national governments really taking it as a matter of urgency to prevent food shortages occuring and to work to intervene when they do, and systems which support that such as democratic government where failure to keep up that end of the bargain results in consequences for the rulers rather than just the people who starve. Everything I can find suggests that intervention is key to famine prevention and state intervention is preferred because it has the feedback effect of creating a sense of responsibility in the government to be proactive. This being a bit of a departure from systems where you might not care so much if the peasants starve cos they aren't directly your peasants and you can probably find some more somewhere else if you need to so long as your army and your aristocracy are happy. Or perhaps you might not even know how much any of your farms under your nominal control are producing because it's only really the concern of the local landowner, as long as you get your taxes. You need to be able and willing to redistribute to combat famine, basically, cos it hopefully won't hit everywhere in a large country at once, and by propping up failing harvests you can ensure that the people who work there will be around next year to try again, where they might do better and another area might fail. Also they aren't displaced and their population isn't added to neighboring areas creating food shortages there even with normal harvests, which then can cause further migration and further instability. Transport helps with this, ability to store strategic reserves of food helps with this, and good accounting of your production in different areas helps with this, as does a culture in your government that it's their responsibility to fix it. Also modern fertilizers and stuff help as well cos obviously they improve raw output and can help failing areas but you still need the logistics cos otherwise you're going to overproduce a lot to ensure security. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Dec 15, 2017 |
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Dec 15, 2017 22:54
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IRT Tom Holland, I felt he came across pretty smarmy when he was on the History of Byzantium podcast. talking about his islam book. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Dec 16, 2017 |
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Dec 16, 2017 05:17
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Tom Holland has done the best pop history accounts I've read of the Greek Persian wars and end of the Roman republic. I don't recall him even attempting to lay new scholarship out in those, just presenting the aspects of the stories that make a good narrative. I'd absolutely recommend them to anybody just getting into ancient history.
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Dec 16, 2017 05:18
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Relevant to this thread's interests: Ancient feces reveal parasites described in earliest Greek medical texts
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Dec 16, 2017 14:42
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Ovid's exile to the remotest margins of the Roman empire revokedquote:More than 2,000 years after Augustus banished him to deepest Romania, the poet Ovid has been rehabilitated. 
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Dec 16, 2017 17:26
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https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/08/a-students-mines-voices-from-the-incan-past/ Holy loving gently caress quote:Medrano told him, “I have spring break coming up and nothing to do.” lol dude decided to decipher khipu because he didn't have anything else to do
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Dec 18, 2017 02:44
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That article is pretty light on the details. I needs more.
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Dec 18, 2017 02:50
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FAUXTON posted:lol dude decided to decipher khipu because he didn't have anything else to do 
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Dec 18, 2017 11:35
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So from the sounds of it they had a written census record that they knew matched some of the khipu so the guy managed to figure out at least a partial translation of it? Neat: hopefully this will lead to more breakthroughs in understanding the Inca more thoughtly.
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Dec 18, 2017 12:34
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What's the origin of the term "the Five Good Emperors"? Obviously the Nerva-->Marcus Aurelius fan club has had lots of members, most prominently Gibbon. But do we know the first person to refer to them specifically as the "Five Goods"? Or is it (as I kind of suspect) too non-specific a term to have a known origin?
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Dec 18, 2017 16:34
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Zombie Dachshund posted:What's the origin of the term "the Five Good Emperors"? Obviously the Nerva-->Marcus Aurelius fan club has had lots of members, most prominently Gibbon. But do we know the first person to refer to them specifically as the "Five Goods"? Or is it (as I kind of suspect) too non-specific a term to have a known origin? Wikipedia cites this Machiavelli quote: quote:From the study of this history we may also learn how a good government is to be established; for while all the emperors who succeeded to the throne by birth, except Titus, were bad, all were good who succeeded by adoption, as in the case of the five from Nerva to Marcus. But as soon as the empire fell once more to the heirs by birth, its ruin recommenced. I’m not sure who the first one to use the term “five good emperors” was though, it doesn’t quite seem Gibbon’s style to say it that way.
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Dec 18, 2017 16:50
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skasion posted:Wikipedia cites this Machiavelli quote: I saw the wiki article, but Machiavelli doesn't use that term. It's definitely not Gibbon's style either: to confirm, I went back and reread that famous first paragraph and did a quick word search. Nope.
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Dec 18, 2017 17:04
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How'd Nerva get.included as a good emperor anyway?
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Dec 18, 2017 17:28
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Epicurius posted:How'd Nerva get.included as a good emperor anyway? Salvaged the relationship with the senate from the status quo under Domitian (“I am your god, obey or I will loving kill you”) very possibly by being involved in his murder, paid basically everyone a bunch of money to win public support, appointed Trajan rather than let the empire collapse into civil war. He seems to have been generally pretty well liked among the Roman elite (anyone who had lasted since Nero’s time must have been very diplomatically minded) but I agree he doesn’t quite fit with the other four.
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Dec 18, 2017 17:37
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Epicurius posted:How'd Nerva get.included as a good emperor anyway? Imperial Rome isn't my jam, but my understanding is that Nerva makes first of five because he started the practice of choosing and adopting his successor to be Augustus rather than rely on genetic dice. Thus by enabling four good emperors, he gets to be "good" too. Also after the Julio-Claudian collapse and how vaguely lovely and dictatorial the Flavians were, a "good" emperor can be determined simply by not being Caligula, Domitian, or some kind of lovely three-monther like Galba or Otho.
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Dec 18, 2017 17:37
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